China Showcases Rising Maritime Power in Airliner Search

A member of the Malaysian Navy makes a call as their ship approaches a ship belonging to the Chinese Coast Guard during an exchange of communication in the South China Sea. Photograph: Rahman Roslan via Getty Images

March 28 (Bloomberg) -- China, in the midst of a military
buildup challenging the U.S. and Japan, is showcasing its
expanded capabilities in the search for Malaysia’s missing plane
by deploying hardware from satellites to warships to an
icebreaker.

With pictures of gray-hulled naval vessels and planes
operating in seas thousands of miles from Chinese shores, state
media has hailed the hunt for Malaysia Air Flight MH370 as the
country’s “strongest-ever search and rescue.” China, which had
a majority of the passengers on the Beijing-bound flight, says
it has sent at least 13 ships to the search zone in the Indian
Ocean.

That ranks as the largest naval deployment outside its
waters in modern history, according to Gary Li, a senior analyst
for IHS Maritime in Beijing. The deployment plays well at home,
where President Xi Jinping has vowed to make China a combat-ready maritime power and is being assertive in territorial
disputes with neighbors including Japan and the Philippines.

“It’s an enormously valuable training exercise for them,
it’s not something they’ve ever done before,” Steve Tsang,
director of the China Policy Institute at the University of
Nottingham in England, said. “It means the Chinese can deploy
ships at quite considerable distance away from home operating in
difficult conditions.”

Satellite Images

The March 8 disappearance of the Malaysian Airline System
Bhd. aircraft with 239 people on board, 154 of them Chinese
nationals, has given China a chance to demonstrate its
effectiveness and capacity relative to smaller Southeast Asian
neighbors.

As Malaysia has struggled over two weeks to map out the
airplane’s last route, China has used its satellites to spot
debris in the southern Indian Ocean that may be linked to the
jet, including an object 22 meters by 13 meters detected in
images taken March 18.

Two Chinese IL-76 transport planes were dispatched to Perth
as the focus of the search moved to an area off Australia’s west
coast. On March 24, Chinese aircraft scouring the ocean spotted
and photographed two “relatively big” objects surrounded by
smaller ones floating in the water.

The search was focused today on an area about 1,850
kilometers (1,150 miles) west of Perth, after a new lead based
on the analysis of radar data showed the plane probably flew a
shorter distance than earlier estimated.

Ocean Search

Three Chinese naval vessels have searched for suspected
debris off the coast of Australia, Geng Yansheng, a spokesman at
the Ministry of Defense said yesterday in a statement on its
website. They are the missile destroyer Haikou, the supply ship
Qiandaohu and the amphibious transport ship Kunlunshan,
according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The military has
also redirected more than 10 satellites to carry out
surveillance in the Indian Ocean, Geng said.

Three escort vessels earlier deployed in the Gulf of Aden
are also searching in the eastern part of the southern Indian
Ocean, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said March 26. The
icebreaker Xue Long, which in January helped evacuate 52 people
from a Russian ship trapped off Antarctica, also arrived March
26 to search for debris.

“The demonstration of how much the Chinese are able to be
part of it shows how confident and capable China now is just
compared to a few years ago,” Tsang said.

Far-Flung Operations

While China has been involved in escort missions off the
piracy-plagued coast of Somalia since 2008, it has little
experience of far-flung operations. In early 2011, it rescued
more than 35,000 citizens from Libya, its largest overseas
evacuation since the Communists came to power in 1949, according
to Xinhua.

“We believe the Chinese government are doing their best,
sending planes, sending people,” Xu Liping, senior fellow at
the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said.

China has contrasted its response with that of Malaysia,
which has been criticized for delays and flaws in its efforts to
find the missing plane. Foreign Ministry officials have urged
Malaysia to step up search efforts and better coordinate the
operation, while state media has questioned the competence of
Malaysian authorities.

Still, China has also turned up false leads. Chinese
satellite images posted on March 12 showed floating objects near
the confluence of the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand that
led to a search in that area. They panned out not to be from the
plane.

Chinese Protest

While China has thrown a lot of resources into the search,
the effort has also shown its limitations, according to Roderic
Wye, an associate fellow of the Asia program at London-based
policy group Chatham House.

“It shows that China has capabilities but not necessarily
excellent ones,” he said. Even so, the country’s leaders have
succeeded in winning positive public opinion at home, Wye said.

On March 25, a day after Malaysia’s prime minister said
flight MH730 ended in the Southern Indian Ocean, Chinese police
watched over relatives as they protested at the Malaysian
embassy before they were bused back to their hotel. A day later,
international media were let into a meeting where families
berated Malaysian military officials trying to explain an
analysis of satellite data from the U.K.

“If the Chinese government didn’t let them go to the
embassy to protest they will use some other means,” said Xu.
“For China, domestic policies are number one.”

‘Taking Advantage’

China’s controlled media means different voices are not
heard, allowing China to deflect anger and frustration toward
Malaysia, Bo Zhiyue, senior research fellow at the National
University of Singapore, said in a telephone interview. This has
been helped by the perception that the country is a victim, he
said.

“China is taking advantage of this incident to say to its
own people, ‘Actually by comparison you are lucky by having us
as your leaders instead of those guys over there,’” Bo said.